


Lady in Waiting

by oxymora (oxymoron)



Category: Thirteen Women (1932)
Genre: Gen, Non-explicit mention of canonical child sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:55:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21838579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoron/pseuds/oxymora
Summary: She longs to be so sheltered and cherished and protected as to not even be aware of it.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Lady in Waiting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingacademy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingacademy/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide to you, laughingacademy!
> 
> Warning: This fic contains non-explicit references to Ursula Georgi being raped as a child. It does not veer beyond what she hints at in the film.

Her name is not Ursula. She’s a child, and she does not know much about herself or the world she lives in. She does not yet know what everybody else knows when they see her. She plays outside with the other village children, plays and plays until her clothes are dirty and her stomach aches from laughing and her face is sunburnt and brown.

It’s not brown enough. The missionary who comes to the village will notice. He’s come to save the brown people from their heathen faith. He’s come to save her from them. She is not brown enough to stay in the village.

The clothes he gives her are not fit for the kind of play she is used to. The name he gives her is strange. The food he gives her is richer and blander than the food she knows. He fills her plate until her stomach aches from eating. She stays rail-thin. Her skin turns pale outside of the sun.

It’s not pale enough. The missionary had told her that her skin made her better than that of the other villagers. He didn’t tell her that it didn’t make her good enough for her new world. When she walks by the harbor, she sees the white sailors spit at brown people. They don’t spit at her. They call her -- not by her new name, or her old one, but by the names that are, she learns, for girls like her. They laugh and jeer. Then they do worse. She heaves until her stomach aches. She stops being a child. She is a woman. 

She starts noticing other women. Pale women in white, flowing dresses and jewellery and pearls. Men do not touch them. They call them lady and open doors and lift things for them. They look like they are floating, untouchable and pristine. They look like they do not even know that they can be harmed. She longs to be so sheltered and cherished and protected as to not even be aware of it.

How do you become a lady, she asks. There are schools that teach you, the missionary says. Finishing schools. You must be good, he says. If you earn your keep, I will send you. She is very good. She earns her keep for six years. 

The school that will teach her to become a lady is called St. Albans. It is a bright place: white girls in white dresses and sunlit white patios. The headmistress calls her sweet. The servants bow to her. She feels like she is floating, like she is untouchable. She feels pristine. She does not yet know that the dirt from the village sticks to her skin; that the sailors’ scent clings to her. She is not like the other girls. The headmistress might not see it or smell it, but the other girls do, instinctively. She is low and cracked and sullied. St. Albans cannot finish what was created broken in the first place. She cannot cross the color line. 

She tells herself that she doesn’t want to be in their stupid little club anyway. She’s lying. 

Somehow, the other girls’ casual cruelty is harder to endure than everything that came before. Perhaps the greatest cruelty is realizing two things at the same time. One: There is nothing magical about those girls. They’re not special. She’s smarter, more beautiful, more determined than the lot of them. Two: She will never be one of them.

She is gone before they take a class picture. St. Albans could not teach her, so she looks for other ways to learn. She learns so many things. How to wear a mask and never let it slip. How to pass for what you are not and can never be. How to become what others want to see in you. How to make them love you. How to mesmerize them. How to hold their fates in your hand and crush, crush, keep crushing till they scream for mercy. How to laugh at them: She has no mercy. Nobody ever gave her any.

She wraps herself in silks and furs. She wraps men (sometimes women) around her fingers. She collects them like pearls. They are easy to string along. She gives them what they want -- it means nothing to her -- and they mean it when they say they’ll give her everything in turn. Sometimes she has to laugh at their stupidity, laugh until her stomach aches. 

She could not be white, so she turns to being Indian with a vengeance. She delights in painting her face so as to look exotic to those bland, wan faces around her. She puts up statues of gods she has long ceased to worship. She works for a Swami (who works for her). He tells her it was written in the stars. She does not believe in stars (she does not believe in anything anymore). It doesn’t matter. He is as powerless as the rest of them against her.

She keeps track of the girls. She has a yearbook with a class photo that does not include her. Laura Stanhope has a little boy. Hazel Cousins has a husband (now that is surprising). Grace Coombs has ennui, and needs something to make her life seem interesting and meaningful. She has no idea how much meaning and interest the world has in store for her. Finally, she’s in correspondence with all of them, even though it is through the voice of Swami Yogadachi (that fool). Finally, she has assumed her rightful place in the center of their little circle. She commands their attention, their esteem, their fear. She reads every letter they send her and the pleas ring like a symphony in her ears.

The realization comes late one evening while she’s sitting in a circus tent and watching May Rascob drop to the floor (no net). She has been longing for the wrong thing all along. She does not need protection. Protection is a folly, there is no force that can protect you from the world. What she needs is power. She can feel the energy flowing through her -- as May lays there in the sawdust, as June collapses high above. She has not just read the stars, she has written them. She knows things those girls never dreamed of -- those silly girls who think they cannot be harmed.


End file.
